Month: May 2022

Leeds Venues 2 and 3

Underneath the arches on Swinegate near the main train station you would find Leeds Cockpit. It was formerly the Cock of the North pub before opening as a music/club venue in 1994. After a twenty-year spell, it closed in 2014 due to the low number of punters attending club nights, those very club nights subsequently relocating across town to the Key Club.

Luminaries such as Amy Winehouse, White Stripes, and hometown boys the Kaiser Chiefs treaded the boards there and the Fall once played a famous gig were the ever-obstreperous Mark E Smith refused to undertake an encore and sent out the roadies instead to play three more tracks.

There were three venues located inside, with the main room (capacity 500) being the location I have visited twice. The other rooms had capacities of 250 and 125 respectively.  It was a grungy atmospheric venue with its industrial type of location by the railway tracks and I liked it a lot and was mournful when I heard it had closed its doors for the last time.

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Leeds Cockpit. Image Credit BBC.

My first visit was on a warm Friday night in May 2003 to see Mogwai. We had a good mulch around a suite of city centre pubs ranging from smooth wine bars to Barnsley Bitter type alehouses, prior to heading over to the venue.

Mogwai produced a stellar set finishing with ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’ and ‘My Father, My King’ and the encore contained a magnificent ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’. We headed back on the Saturday arriving home just in time to watch Southampton narrowly lose the Cup Final to Arsenal.

My second visit was 11 years later within the remit of our first encounter with the Live at Leeds multi-venue event. We made a last-minute decision to attend the shindig so could only obtain a hotel in the suburbs which necessitated a bus ride into town and a taxi ride home. We did forward plan though to ensure we had some emergency crunch creams waiting for us when we landed back at our digs.  

The first band we witnessed were Darlia, who despite having a fundamental flaw of being from Blackpool were rather enjoyable. They formed in 2013 and despite some considerable press attention and a slot on the NME awards tour they appear to have been on a sabbatical since 2017.  

The second act was a four-piece post punk band from Essex called The Bohicas who garnered support slots with Franz Ferdinand but subsequently disbanded in 2016. Looking back now at the listings for the day I have noted that a young Wolf Alice played the venue later that evening, but as there were so many other venues to go and visit, we moved on at that point.

The Escobar in the centre of the city was arguably two separate areas with a Mexican cantina restaurant upstairs, with a dingy bar and live music room upstairs. In March 2013 Gill and I were away for a weekend in Leeds where we stumbled upon this bar and discovered that there were a couple of bands on.   

 

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Leeds Escobar. Image Credit leedsbeer.info

The main band was The Vendettas, an energetic Leeds based three-piece who I would quantify as garage mod revivalists replete with the requisite garb including the traditional parkas. They were supported on the night by 54 Knockout.

Manchester Venue 59 Sound Control – Part 3

There was an understandable backlash when the closure of Sound Control was announced, and a petition launched by one Preston punter (not me!), but they obviously do have damn fine tastes in that city! However as is often the way against commercial organisations, it was all in the end ultimately futile.

The next gig in the Sound Control Music Room in May 2013 was an interesting one. As we exited the station around 6pm we witnessed some activity outside the venue and grabbed the opportunity to check on stage times as the gig that evening was a dual headlining tour. As we enquired, a transit van rolled up and an intrigued observer jumped out and joined in the chat for us to then discover it was Patrick Stickles, the lead singer of Titus Andronicus.

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Titus Andronicus on stage. Image Credit buffablog.com

I first picked up on this unique band in 2008 via their remarkable but somewhat demented debut album Airing of Grievances, which was favourably reviewed at the time as the sound of a ‘violent, overblown and irreverent’ indie band, I have read many lesser appraisals. The band themselves were once in a Shakespeare musical question clue on University Challenge, unsurprisingly unrecognised by the University team. Titus was also the name chosen for the lead character in the remarkable Gormenghast Trilogy.

They were formed in New Jersey in 2005 and have cited Neutral Milk Hotel as an influence and you can hear that very band pervading through their musical output. They were strange but enjoyable and to exemplify this, their bassist in the middle of the set proceeded to impart a rambling surreal tasteless gag and without any preamble after it launched straight into the next thunderous tune.

In the gap between bands, we retired to the bar and whilst endeavouring to get served we were assailed by a random but regular holler of Hold Steady, the shouts emanated from a chap called Nigel who had recognised us from a recent gig, and we proceeded to see him sporadically at further gigs and chatted about music and his allegiance to Charlton FC. It was rapidly turning into a slightly odd evening.

Now I was once referenced in the NME review as one of a ‘couple of dodgy individuals pogoing at the front’ at a Snuff gig at Preston Caribbean Club in 1990, a quote I will be eternally proud of! However, I had never yet been featured in an NME photo, just missing out at a Screaming Blue Messiahs gig at Manchester International as I must have stepped back from stage as the camera clicked.

The main band this night was again F##ked Up who were in good nick with their lead singer Pink Eyes who has a habit of marauding the moshpit. There was a panoramic picture of him in the crowd in the famous music magazine next week. I hungrily scoured the hundred people pictured but would you credit it I was a yard to the left off camera; it was obviously never destined to be!

Three years later in 2016 I went to see the Connecticut post rock band The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. They were in the mould of luminaries such as Maybe She Will and Explosions in the Sky. They had entered my galaxy via their debut album ‘Whenever, if Ever’. They were an enjoyable interesting proposition live.

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The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. Image Credit godisinthetvzine.co.uk

My final gig was my own sabbatical to the venue as it took place 15 days before its closure on 01/12/17. I had only been resident in Manchester for three months so was still somewhat in a bit of a haze, so it was good to have a merry band of six over from Preston to see the legendary Rocket from the Crypt. We made the obligatory visit to the Noodle Bar down Oxford Road before discovering Refuge bar for the first time as it always thought previously it was part of the hotel!

Rocket were understandably a step down from the level of their astounding gigs in the mid-late 90’s but as ever were good value and my pal Paul Wilson obtained a selfie with the frontman Speedo post-gig. The boys headed back on the Preston train whilst I was still encountering the strangeness of a 10-minute commute back to the rental, though there was a detour to the midnight Tesco that evening for much needed unhealthy snacks!